Back'Any Tesla employee interested?': Australian tycoon tries to poach Musk's staff; Here's why
Scott Farquhar, Australia's third-richest man, ridiculed Elon Musk's directive in a series of tweets as being ‘like something out of the 1950s’
PremiumElon Musk got into a Twitter spat with Australia's tech billionaire over the value of putting an end to remote working. In an internal mail, Tesla's CEO said, "everyone at Tesla is required to spend a minimum of 40 hours in the office per week", and "if you don't show up, we will assume you have resigned".
The mail drew criticism from work advocates about potential exposure to the coronavirus.
Scott Farquhar, Australia's third-richest man, ridiculed Musk's directive in a series of tweets as being "like something out of the 1950s".
"We're setting our sights on growing Atlassian to 25K employees by FY26," Farquhar concluded. "Any Tesla employees interested?"
However, Musk shot back saying, "The above set of tweets illustrate why recessions serve a vital economic cleansing function".
In 2017, Farquhar's Atlassian co-founder, Mike Cannon-Brookes, cooperated with Musk, publicly taking up and facilitating his offer to supply a powerful Tesla battery installation for the state of South Australia after it suffered a blackout in 2017.
Cannon-Brookes, who has since led a campaign to buy Australian energy company AGL Energy Ltd and speed up its transition to renewable power, reposted Farquhar's remarks criticising Musk's return-to-office order.
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